Bhopal police to provide charge sheets in CDs to minimise paper work

In a big leap towards digitisation of work, Bhopal police will start providing copies of charge sheet in the form of compact-disc (CD)-based soft copies to the accused, their lawyers and other parties concerned, a move expected to save the force lakhs of rupees every year.

In a big leap towards digitisation of work, Bhopal police will start providing copies of charge sheet in the form of compact-disc (CD)-based soft copies to the accused, their lawyers and other parties concerned, a move expected to save the force lakhs of rupees every year.

Besides, police will also retain the charge sheet records only in the form of soft copies.

This step would not only help the police in saving huge sum of money spent for photocopying huge stacks of charge sheet documents and also minimise paper use.

The police recently carried out a trial run for the new scheme while submitting the charge sheet in connection with an alleged scam in appointments in the state assembly secretariat between 1993-2003. Only one set of hard copy was presented to the court.

Inspector general of police (IG), Bhopal zone Yogesh Choudhary, has already sent out instruction to all police officials under him to submit copies of charge sheets in CDs.

“As of now, we are submitting hard copies of the charge sheets for the accused persons. It takes time for photocopying the charge sheets and also involves huge amount of money. Now, we have decided to submit soft copies of the charge sheet to everyone except a hard copy to the court,” the IG said.

Initially, it would be for those cases in which police are required to submit over 50 pages of charge sheet and there were four and above accused.

On an average, about 22,000 cases are registered by police in Bhopal every year. Of them, there are nearly 15,000 cases in which police submits 20-30 page charge sheets, and 30-50 pages in about 3,000 cases and in rest of the cases, police have to submit over 50 pages of charge sheet.

Sources said that Bhopal police was spending nearly `10-12 lakh per year in providing hard copies of charge sheets.